Bios upgrade

[timjassar]

I have an Amptron Pm8600c ver.6 motherboard with and Award Bios chip. I would like to upgrade my sdram to 128mb, Per the manufacture I must upgrade my Bios to do this.I downloaded their bios upgrade for my motherboard.But everytime I attempt the upgrade I get an error message that says "erase chip failure".The manufacture will not respond to my request for help now.Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[timjassar]

Yes,I am pretty sure I followed all of their instructions right down to making a boot disk.I downloaded all I could find on their web site.Do you recall anything special you might have done that wasnt included in their instructions.Did you have to change any jumper settings prior to the upgrade?

[This message has been edited by timjassar (edited 03-10-2000).]

[Krim]

Usually that error means that the chip won't be flashed. If you followed the procedure then I think your only option is to buy the upgraded BIOS chip from the manufacturer and install it yourself. They cost about $15-20. I've had to do this in the past after receiving the "Block erase error" on my system board.

I take you were able to flash the old BIOS back?

[timjassar]

Hey guys thanks for your responses. Atten. Krim according to the manufactures web site my bios is flashable but for some reason it wont flash, its sure got me confused.I didnt have to flash back to the original because it wouldnt let me upgrade .I did price a new bios chip and the cost was about $80 which was an expense I was trying to avoid.If you found a supplier that is in the $15-$20 price range please send me the address so i can check them out.

[Symes]

Are you sure that there's not a jumper to set the eeprom voltage between 5 and 12V ?

If you lift the label on the bios chip itself and look up the manufacturer details you can easily check what the chip can and cannot do.

[timjassar]

Symes, yes their is a jumper for 5v or 12v its currently set at 5v.The manual for the motherboard says this jumper shouldnt be changed from the default setting (5v)and that this jumper doesnt effect flashing the bios. When I peel the label off the bios chip what exactly am I looking for?
Thanks for your response.

[john robbinson]

im going to try and copy the link and post it here if it dons't work ill give you the procedger to get there its hard to find. http://www.amptron.com/html/replacem.html

[bdunn]

Many of thos boards were sold with PROMS not Flash EPROMs this means that though the board supports a Flashable update system your computer doesn't.

Best solution for a reasonably priced update is to download the BIOS and then visit http://www.badflash.com following directions for what to do if your flash went awry and you cant get you machine back.

If you send him the BIOS he can burn an EPROM for you then you will have an EPROM so if you need to update down the line you can

Good Luck
Bruce

[Symes]

I thought I replied a couple of days ago, must have gone awry - sorry!

The chip markings will be something like "H.T. M30884 J9735"

A search on the web should hopefully get a link to the chip maufacturer where you can check the spec.

Symes.